Skim and Plunge

The editors at Yale University Press were nice enough to invite me to edit this year's edition of Best Technology Writing. It's a great collection of essays, by some of my very favorite writers, and I encourage you to pick up a copy. I wrote an opening essay for the book that tries to wrestle with the ways in which technology writing has changed over the past few decades. Here's a section of it:

The ubiquity of the digital lifestyle has forced us to write and think about technology in a different way. Think back, for example, to Stewart Brand’s classic 1973 Rolling Stone essay on the first video gamers, “SPACEWAR: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among The Computer Bums.” When Brand stumbled across those Stanford proto-gamers, battling each other via command line, it was clear to him that he’d just glimpsed the future. Of course, it took a true visionary like Brand to recognize what he’d encountered, and to write about it with such clarity and infectious curiosity--in the process inventing a whole genre of technology writing that could do justice to the encounter. But there is something about that experience that is also by definition short-sighted: any given technology will mean very different things, and have very different effects, when it is restricted to a small slice of the population. Brand’s opening line was “Computers are coming to the people.” That was prescient enough. But as it turned out, what he saw on those screens actually had very little to do with gaming culture today. SPACEWAR let Brand sense before just about anyone else that information technology would become as mainstream as rock-and-roll or television. But he couldn’t have imagined a culture where games like Spore or Grand Theft Auto -- both of which are deftly dissected in this volume -- are far more complex, open-ended and popular than many Hollywood blockbusters.

Likewise, hypertext, until mid-1994, was an emerging technology whose power users were almost all writers of experimental fiction. You could look at those links on the screen, and begin to imagine what might happen if billions of people started clicking on them. But mostly you were guessing. A shocking amount of the early commentary on hypertext--some of it, in all honesty, written by me--focused on the radical effect hypertext would have on storytelling. Once hypertext went mainstream, however, that turned out to one of the least interesting things about it. (We’re still reading novels the old-fashioned way, one page after another.) And that’s precisely the trouble with writing about a technology when it’s still in leading indicator mode. You could look at those hyperlinks on the screen, and if you really concentrated, you might imagine a future where, say, newspaper articles linked to each other. But you could never imagine Wikipedia or YouPorn.

Now we don’t have to imagine it at all: the digital future, to paraphrase William Gibson, is so much more evenly distributed among us. We don’t have to gaze into a crystal ball; we can just watch ourselves, self-reflecting as we interact with this vast new ecosystem. Some of my favorite passages in this collection have this introspective quality: the mind examining its own strange adaptation to a world that has been transformed by information technology.

Consider this paragraph, from the opening section of Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”:I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

Carr intends this as a critique, of course, and his observations will no doubt ring true for anyone who spends hours each day in front of a networked computer screen. I feel it myself right now, as I write this essay, with my open Gmail inbox hovering in the background behind the word processor, and a text message buzzing on my phone, and a whole universe of links tempting me. It is harder to sit down and focus on a linear argument or narrative for an hour at a time. In a way, our prophecies about the impact of hypertext on storytelling had it half right; it’s not that people now tell stories using branching hypertext links: it’s that we actively miss those links when we pick up an old-fashioned book.

Carr is right, too, that there is something regrettable about this shift. The kind of deep, immersive understanding that one gets from spending three hundred pages occupying another person’s consciousness is undeniably powerful and essential. And no medium rivals the book for that particular kind of thinking. But it should also be said that this kind of thinking has not simply gone away; people still read books and magazines in vast numbers. It may be harder to enter the kind of slow, contemplative state that Carr cherishes, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I think of our present situation as somewhat analogous to the mass migration from the country to the city that started several centuries ago in Europe: the bustle and stimulation and diversity of urban life made it harder to enjoy the slower, organic pleasures of rural living. Still, those pleasures didn’t disappear. People continue to cherish them in mass numbers to this day.

And like urban life, the new consciousness of digital culture has many benefits; it may dull certain cognitive skills, but it undoubtedly sharpens others. In his essay, Carr derides the “skimming” habits of online readers. It’s an easy target, particularly when pitted against the hallowed activity of reading a four-hundred page novel. But skimming is an immensely valuable skill. Most of the information we interact with in our lives -- online or off -- lacks the profundity and complexity of a Great Book. We don’t need deep contemplation to assess an interoffice memo or quarterly financial report from a company we’re vaguely interested in. If we can process that information quickly and move on to more important things, so much the better.

Even loftier pursuits benefit from well-developed skimming muscles. I think many of us who feel, unlike Carr, that Google has actually made us smarter operate in what I call “skim-and-plunge” mode. We skim through pages of search results or hyperlinked articles, getting a sense of the waters, and then, when we find something interesting, we dive in and read in a slower, more engaged mode. Yes, it is probably a bit harder to become immersed in deep contemplation today than it was sitting in library in 1985, But that kind of rapid-fire skimming and discovery would have been, for all intents and purposes, impossible before the web came along.

The benefits of this new consciousness go far beyond skimming of course, especially when you consider that many of the distractions are not tantalizing hyperlinks but other human beings. Here’s Andrew Sullivan describing one of the defining aspects of the experience of blogging, in his revealing essay, “Why I Blog”:

Within minutes of my posting something, even in the earliest days, readers responded. E-mail seemed to unleash their inner beast. They were more brutal than any editor, more persnickety than any copy editor, and more emotionally unstable than any colleague. Again, it’s hard to overrate how different this is... [B]efore the blogosphere, reporters and columnists were largely shielded from this kind of direct hazing. Yes, letters to the editor would arrive in due course and subscriptions would be canceled. But reporters and columnists tended to operate in a relative sanctuary, answerable mainly to their editors, not readers. For a long time, columns were essentially monologues published to applause, muffled murmurs, silence, or a distant heckle. I’d gotten blowback from pieces before—but in an amorphous, time-delayed, distant way. Now the feedback was instant, personal, and brutal.

No doubt the intensity and immediacy of the feedback has its own disruptive force, making it harder for the blogger to enter the contemplative state that his forebears in the print magazine era might have enjoyed more easily. Sullivan’s description could in fact easily be marshaled in defense of Carr’s dumbing-down argument--except that where Carr sees chaos and distraction, Sullivan sees a new kind of engagement between the author and the audience. Sullivan would be the first to admit that this new kind of engagement is noisier, more offensive, and often more idiotic than any traditional interaction between author and editor. But there is so much useful signal in that noise that most of us who have sampled it find it hard to imagine going back. After all, the countryside was more polite, too. But in the end, most of us chose the city, despite all the chaos and distractions. I think we've made a similar choice with the Web today.

Comments

This is a nice excerpt - thanks for sharing. I know that I do more reading online now, and much more skimming than immersive contemplation. Perhaps counter-intuitively, I find that this facilitates deeper real-life interactions - rather than being entirely unaware of something, I may have seen a few tweets or links but not taken the time to deep dive into the content. Therefore, when a friend/colleague mentions the topic, I can say "I've heard a little about that - tell me more."

Google IS making us stupid. The problem with the skim and dive method is that folks aren't ever really diving. They have a little information from various sources of questionable reliability, and fill in the rest from their imagination. Based on a few web posts, they think they know more about a topic than they actually do. At the same time, as anyone who ever did archival or library research in the old days knows, the Internet is a huge leap forward in making vast and previously inaccessible resources available. But use it as card catalog, or at best a bunch of abstracts. You still have to turn off the 'puter and read a few hours a day, or your deep reading skills atrophy. And Internet sources called for a high degree of critical reading.

"it’s not that people now tell stories using branching hypertext links: it’s that we actively miss those links when we pick up an old-fashioned book."

the interactivity of hypertext is addictive. i often find myself wander off to different threads of thought while reading a book; since my web-browser is sitting right next to me; albeit stimulated by the physical book.

makes it terribly hard to power through a book.

hoping to try to the kindle soon, perhaps it will bind me to a virtual dictionary & wikipedia - and not let me wander off elsewhere.

The addition of the instantaneous crowd feedback is an interesting observation.

I find that when I write for my blog I'm usually inspired by those contemplative musings that you talk about and Carr looks for. I usually bang out the first draft of a post without thinking about anything or anyone but the idea itself. Then, if I let it sit for a while, I notice that my edits tend to take the audience into account a whole lot more, and I often delete entire posts because of it.

Not sure what that means, if anything, but it definitely has an effect on the end output.

Speaking of crowd driven criticism and fact checking, I was reading your book Emergence the other day and noticed that you attributed the term "homeostasis" to Norbert Wiener. In actuality the term was coined by a physiologist named Walter Bradford Cannon around 1932 - about 15 years prior to Wiener's usage of the term in his Cybernetics book.

Steve,
good post. Brenda, post comment 2 above, makes a good point, re: "The problem with the skim and dive method is that folks aren't ever really diving."

This is key. The differences between reading on paper and reading on screens is so vast, that future MRI scans will show us just how different parts of our brains light up when we read on paper compared to when we skim and dive online and on Kindles and nooks and even Bindles. Steve, we need a new word or term for reading on screens in order to SEE the differences, and so far no word has come forth. Any ideas for this? Some has suggested screening, or screading, even diging for digital reading. Certainly, screen reading is NOT reading. Reading must be reserved only for paper reading. we need a new word for reading on screens and we need it soon. can you blog one day on this? There's lots of info online already about this issue, but so far the MSM won't touch it. Google "zippy1300" and see for yourself. What we need now are good neuroscience studies of brain chemisty on this. I am convinced that reading on screens is INFERIOR to reading on paper in terms of processing, digesting, analyzing, retaining, empathy and critical thinking skills. Once the brain scan MRI stuff comes in, you will believe me. Go look now.

"Carr is right, too, that there is something regrettable about this shift. The kind of deep, immersive understanding that one gets from spending three hundred pages occupying another person’s consciousness is undeniably powerful and essential. And no medium rivals the book for that particular kind of thinking." -- YES!

Steve, one more thing: what people don't get yet is that reading on paper lights up differnet parts of the brain compared to when we read on screens. I know for a fact. Why? Because the materiality of reading on a paper surface with one's eyes, in a chair or at a desk, or on a plane or in the dentist's office, is vastly different and SUPERIOR to reading picelated squiggles on a plastic screen, THROUGh a plastic screen. The neural pathways get hit in a different ways by the competing juices. Paper delivers the ideas DEEP into our brains, where if we care to, we can really THINK about them. Screens deliver emails, gossip, quick jumps in the book, google searches and that's all. We need to wake up to this before it's too late. I would love to see a big cover story about this in Newsweek sometime in 2010 or 2011 when the brain scan studies come in from UCLA and Tufts. Not a story about the gadgetheads, who cares? But about the neuroscience of all this and why paper reading trumps screeing or screading every time. Ask me how i know this, Steve. I will dish. So far you refuse to answer my emails, why is that, sir?

On June 9-12, 2010, there will be a conference at XXX college on
"The Future of Reading". They have invited speakers from a
broad range of fields, including vision science, type design,
publishing, e-books, writing system, history of print,
and other areas. More details will be available when they
launch their webs site in December.

Want to know where this will be? email me and i will dish: danbloom at gmail

Steve, after re-reading your blog post above on a paper print out, which is real reading, compared to the fake reading we do on screens, which i call screening or screading, i noticed a few major goofs you made IMHO, in all due respect. let me tell you:

You wrote: "But [he] couldn’t have imagined a culture where games like Spore or Grand Theft Auto -- both of which are deftly dissected in this volume -- are far more complex, open-ended and popular than many Hollywood blockbusters."

Steve Berlin Johnson! This is pure BS! get your head examined ASAP! you think games are more complex and popular than MOVIES? You have totally lost the game here, sir. You sound like a teenage boy! have you not grown up yet? my gosh, that is a very stoopid remark. games are pure BS. for children and teens. movies are ART, even Hwood blockbusters are narrative art.

2. re; "I think many of us who feel, unlike Carr, that Google has actually made us smarter operate in what I call “skim-and-plunge” mode. We skim through pages of search results or hyperlinked articles, getting a sense of the waters, and then, when we find something interesting, we dive in and read in a slower, more engaged mode."

No, you don't. Reading on a glass screen, is not reading. It is "screading" and screading is not reading. u do not real slower and in a more engaged way, you think you do, but it is only when you print it out and read it on paper that you really READ, sir. Is Kindle paying your salary now? Sheesh. Go back to paper reading, SBJ and find out the truth. this e-reader game is just a game and you have been gamed. books matter, on paper. Ebooks are BS!

3. re: ''After all, the countryside was more polite, too. But in the end, most of us chose the city, despite all the chaos and distractions. I think we've made a similar choice with the Web today.''

Steve, you are SO wrong here. You did not CHOOSe the city, the city chose you via brainwashing and programming to move to city, city life sucks, it is NOT natural, the chaos and distractions have in fact messed up your mind and your sense of values, and you, WE, made the wrong choice in building large impersonal cities and then getting people to move to them. Stevem that was a BIG mistake. How can you be so blind, so high and mighty flying in a big steel iron bird to the UK and wasting fossil fuels that way? Shame on you, Steve Berlin Johnson, for being so blind!

Steve, sorry for the above posts, if any of them seemed a bit excessive, was just trying to make a few points. But now I see where you are coming from: as Christine Rosen has observed, you are "a reflexive techno-utopian".....that explains why you veer off the highway so much...... I see now. Still, my comments stand. But please accept my apologies, too. At the same time as I disagree with you, I respect your mind and writings, too.

Consider this: How my reading life has changed from when I was a teenager in the 70's.

Today, I put books I want to read in my Amazon wishlist(some are there from 10 years ago). I have access to reviews, recommendations and books which are similar to ones I like. Sites like Goodreads.com allow me to easily classify books into those I have read, to read, and am reading. On the web, I can request books through an entire library system,in a number of formats and delivered to circulation desk to a library . I can track when the books are there electronically. Comparitively, the sourcing, retention of lists of things I want to read and selection of books to read is easier.

Today,I find myself jumping back and forth between multiple books and bailing on a book that don't hold my interest. I find myself more interested in footnotes today and following them up. I do have trouble reading longer books. Books between 200-250 pages seem just right.

I do see a change is in music, I have no patience to listen to new music if it doesn't grab me quickly.

I like this comment: "On the web, I can request books through an entire library system,in a number of formats and delivered to circulation desk to a library . I can track when the books are there electronically. Comparitively, the sourcing, retention of lists of things I want to read and selection of books to read is easier..." is very interesting!!

Everything matters! That's a perfect phrase for the reality I tried to get at: "mattering" (alias meaning) somehow winning out even when things seem random. Or when they grow out of mistakes (or out of some small, distant move or misstep). I just want to emphasize the good work on this blog, has excellent views and a clear vision of what you are looking for

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I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of nine books, host of one television series, and co-founder of three web sites. We split our time between Brooklyn, NY and Marin County, CA. Personal correspondence should go to sbeej68 at gmail dot com. If you're interested in having me speak at an event, drop a line to Wesley Neff at the Leigh Bureau (WesN at Leighbureau dot com.)

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of InnovationAn exploration of environments that lead to breakthrough innovation, in science, technology, business, and the arts. I conceived it as the closing book in a trilogy on innovative thinking, after Ghost Map and Invention. But in a way, it completes an investigation that runs through all the books, and laid the groundwork for How We Got To Now. (Available from IndieBound here.)

The Invention of AirThe story of the British radical chemist Joseph Priestley, who ended up having a Zelig-like role in the American Revolution. My version of a founding fathers book, and a reminder that most of the Enlightenment was driven by open source ideals. (Available from IndieBound here.)

The Ghost MapThe story of a terrifying outbreak of cholera in 1854 London 1854 that ended up changing the world. An idea book wrapped around a page-turner. I like to think of it as a sequel to Emergence if Emergence had been a disease thriller. You can see a trailer for the book here. (Available from IndieBound here.)

Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday LifeMy first best-seller, and the only book I've written in which I appear as a recurring character, subjecting myself to a battery of humiliating brain scans. The last chapter on Freud and the neuroscientific model of the mind is one of my personal favorites. (Available from IndieBound here.)